Complete newbie and clueless!

[plankton]

Don't beet yourself up about it we all apart from the 'elite' have lost fish when we started out.

Even the elite will have lost fish, everyone has to start somewhere. They just might not admit it

Just who are these elite anyway? Everyone is a starter....

[Titchyfeep]

You need a tub (get the smallest you can) of Seachem Equilibrium. Very gradually raise the hardness and remain with the fish you have. Hopefully they’ll survive and either naturally increase their numbers as livebearers do, or they’ll gradually die off over time. Or you can wait for the fin issues to resolve then add other fish which are suited to a wide range of water hardness (eg white cloud mountain minnows).

Once you no longer have dedicated hard water fish, you can then gradually reduce the hardness again back to natural water and add in soft water species.

Thank you. This whole thing has left me feeling awful. Thankfully the fin that was worst affected seems to be getting better. I don’t know if this happened from stress or if they came home from the lfs with it. Only issue I now have is I have 2 males and 1 female and obviously I don’t want to buy any more platys! Stupidly took my children in to pets at home just to look and now they want guppies because they were so pretty but I explained we would have the exact same problem with them! I now have no idea what other fish to get. Think I will need to look at getting an assassin snail to get rid of all my pests snails though!

[VikingMummy2015]

If you harden the water, you can absolutely add guppies (my kids wanted them when they were younger too), and just add a group of males to avoid fry.

[plankton]

Don't feel awful, we've all been there.
It's a complicated subject when you start out, and the shops don't always give the best info to help newbies.
When I started in the 1960s I lived in a hard water area and wondered why I lost so many tetras and gourami.....I didn't learn properly until the original forum turned up in about 2000.....this is the second version of it.
It was very hard to get the right info in those days.

[Titchyfeep]

I stopped updating because I felt terrible and I’m still an awful person because I didn’t alter the water but kept the platys/swords.I did add neon terra and they all seem happy together Platy gave birth last night, can see at least 4 fry. Fingers crossed they don’t get eaten.

[Gingerlove05]

I stopped updating because I felt terrible and I’m still an awful person because I didn’t alter the water but kept the platys/swords.I did add neon terra and they all seem happy together Platy gave birth last night, can see at least 4 fry. Fingers crossed they don’t get eaten.

Dont feel too bad, we all make mistakes at the start. But i know what you mean, i still feel bad for our first few fish. And as Ian mentioned shops are not always helpful and our first shop was useless as we found out. The trouble is shops are running a business and are trying to make a sale.

[John Linklater]

I stopped updating because I felt terrible and I’m still an awful person because I didn’t alter the water but kept the platys/swords.I did add neon terra and they all seem happy together Platy gave birth last night, can see at least 4 fry. Fingers crossed they don’t get eaten.

I’ve been back keeping fish for 18 months after a 20 year break. I couldn’t list all the mistakes I’ve made during that time because there are too many. You can only try your best and take advice. Don’t feel bad.

[plankton]

I've been keeping fish on-and-off since the 1960s. If I listed all the mistakes I've ever made I'm sure most people would throw a complete wobbly....all I can do is help people not to make the same ones.
You just have to learn to try and not do it again (and again in some cases ) and not feel bad.

[Titchyfeep]

The fish have up their Christmas decorations